1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a valve membrane and a check valve including the same, and more particularly, to a valve membrane and a check valve able to be mounted on a pipe through which a small amount of fluid is transported.
2. Description of the Related Art
Observation of a reaction between new drugs and a cell is required for developing new drugs and testing the stability thereof. In general, a reaction test between a drug and a cell is performed by using a culture dish, or the like.
However, since a reaction between a drug and a cell, occurring in the culture dish, is significantly different from a reaction between the drug and the cell, occurring inside a body, it may be difficult to accurately observe or examine a reaction between a drug and a cell only through a result of the test using the culture dish. Therefore, development of a new device that can observe the reaction between the drug and the cell in a similar environment to that of a body is required.
To this end, the applicant has developed a technology of circulating a culture medium. However, since a small amount of culture medium needs to be constantly supplied, for smoothly culturing the cell, development of a small-sized valve that can control a supply amount and a supply speed of the culture medium is required.
For reference, as the related art associated with the small-sized valve, Patent Documents 1 and 2 are provided. However, in Patent Document 1, since an opening and closing unit 102 is fixed by a fixation unit 101 by a connection unit 103, it is difficult to control an irregular fluid flow state. That is, in Patent Document 1, in the irregular fluid flow state (particularly, a pulsating phenomenon), the opening and closing unit 102 may vibrate significantly according to a flow direction of the fluid.
Unlike this, in Patent Document 2, since a valve is opened and closed by expansion and contraction of a slope hole 5, the supply of the fluid can be minutely controlled. However, in Patent Document 2, since the supply amount of the fluid is limited by the size of the slope hole 5, there is a substantial limit in constantly supplying a small amount of fluid.